Carnaval provides a convenient cover story for nearly 100 deaths and disappearances in “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho’s robust sense-memory immersion into the sights, sounds and suffocating climate — both political and meteorological — the Brazilian director associates with 1977 Recife. It was a period of great “mischief,” per the super-cinematic thriller’s opening titles, although that’s too light a word to describe the everyday corruption that permeates practically every aspect of this meaty, 160-minute period piece. Mendonça remembers it well, demonstrating how even the worst of times can inspire a perverse sort of nostalgia.
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